Koriand'r, Servant of Scath
by Fuzzy Necromancer
Summary: An AU where Starfire is a cultist of Trigon. Ongoing story with many parts.
1. Chapter 1

Koriand'r was starving.

That was nothing new. She had been starving for 27 Tamaranian days, or 38 Outer Spiral Arm Standard Rotations. That wasn't to say her captors didn't feed her at all, but they wanted to keep her beneath her full strength. She received a handful of low-calorie archaea paste every four OSASR, mixed in with trace minerals that made it taste even worse but kept her from developing any serious diseases from malnutrition.

The official nourishment wasn't her only source of food. No spaceship of this size was a truly sterile environment, and nine-legged gnats that came to drink at her sores and lesions added a blessed bit of protein, once she'd developed the patience to lure them into a false sense of security. It was just one of the many bonuses of a prehensile tongue.

Seven of her stomachs groaned. The last two had gone numb twelve OSASR ago. Her gnorfka had told her that the prehensile tongue, like their other abilities, were a blessing from Shub-Nigguroth, that the Mother of All Things had shaped each life-form with unique capacities to thrive and adapt, as the continuous divergence of species fulfilled her grand destiny. Right now, as she felt horrible little palps scrape the still-tender scars in her armpits, Koriand'r found that destiny a bit too broad and abstract for her tastes.

"The prophet Zarquon will come, I await his coming with patience and grace. The galaxies shine in his crown. His holy words are all the food I need. His sacred vows are my water. My faith in him is more important than methane to breathe..."

Starfire rubbed the plaque from her tongue with her mandibles, careful not to disturb the parasites that nibbled at her. It was a delicate matter of risk-analysis, to give them enough time to acclimate to her without allowing them to actually reopen a wound with their feeding. Protein gained verses nutrients lost. It helped that water rations were distributed as frequently once every two OSASR.

"As he walked between the light of neutron stars and waited outside the event horizon, so shall I endure. As he..." the prisoner across from her murmured and chanted all his waking hours, even as the guards took out their frustrations on his whiskers and ovipositor with their Nth-metal nightsticks. It faded into the background, just like the muttering Daxomite in his lead chains or the parademon whispering about the anti-life equation. The only reason she actively listened to it now was to distract herself from the itching pains of those nine tiny spurred legs as the probed for the lymph nodes under her secondary carapace.

She tried to think of the virtues that defined her people, proud in their adversity: Courage, Friendship, Bisonomy, Insight, Ferocity, Endurance, and Polypsychism.

The hawkman across and three cells down from her sat, preening his nearly-featherless wings. He'd begged and prayed a lot when he first came in. Now he didn't do anything except groom and shiver.

"Nice weather we're having, right?" the white Martian said to the Zarquonian. "I'm planning to order a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster and a plate of deep-fried red bugs as soon as the waiter comes around!" She pounded her chest with amusement. "Shame the service is so late!"

The Zarquonian prayed on, heedless of his surroundings. The Martian sighed.

The lights flickered. The ship had just passed through a gamma storm.

Starfire clenched her fists, marshalled the solar energy coursing through her decentralized nervous system, and shoved it as hard as she could. The organic superconductors that made up her "fingernails" glimmered, and for a moment, she thought she'd found a weak point.

The recoil sent her to her knees. The rapid movement dislodged the gnats, which fluttered to the corners of the cell, half a body-length out of her tongue's reach.

A gargling howl from the white Martian informed Koriand'r that her neighbor had also tried to take advantage of the momentary flutter in the security grid, in this case pressing against the field stabilizer that prevented her shapeshifting.

"You know," the Martian croaked, "there are people on the outer rim who would pay a lot of money for this kind of treatment."

The parademon snickered. As a species, they were better adapted to chortles or guffaws, but this one managed it. The white Martian gave a weak smile of gratitude.

"You know what Granny Goodness would call this place?" the parademon rasped. It was one of the few prizes denied access to water, but Koriand'r still wasn't sure if they had the ability to extract water vapor from the air, or maybe just didn't need it to survive.

"What?" the white Martian asked.

"Rehab!" the parademon shouted.

Koriand'r couldn't help herself. She giggled. The Martian pounded her chest enthusiastically. Even the Daxomite quirked his lips. The mass of wings and eyeballs at the far left limit of her vision quivered its enjoyment.

"You guy's are the best," the white Martian said. "I'm really gonna miss you when these Gordanians break up the band and send us all home."

Nobody laughed this time.

Koriand'r forced herself upright. A Tamaranian princess should comport herself with dignity. She should show strength in the greatest adversity. She might be on her way to become a prize, a toy, a slave in a strange land, but she would never let them think she was a Troq. She wouldn't let her people down. That was why she had submitted to this treatment, after all.

She stretched her bound limbs overhead to better let the scent of pus waft through the air. The gnats didn't stir yet, but they would come soon. Three of her stomachs growled at the same time, while another two cramped. Koriand'r stayed upright.

"I await his coming with patience and grace. The galaxies shine in his crown. His holy words..."

Koriand'r scraped her tongue, even though the plaque was already long-gone. She probed between her mandibles, false teeth, and true teeth, foraging for some forgotten remnant of food, even a bit of her own dead skin or congealed mucus, that could give the tiniest shadow of strength to her oh-so-slowly failing body. She found none.

She had almost escaped, three meals ago. Maybe the Gordanians had altered her ration plan in response to that. If her body was draining nutrients from her endoskeleton to sustain her sub-dermal exoskeleton, she wouldn't be able to break the door open and break her jailkeeper's face with it. She grudgingly admired the calculating precision of their torment. A less insightful slaver might have kept giving her enough food to keep her strength up, or over-compensated and underfed her enough to lead to permanent disability or disfigurement.

"Silence!" the guard roared over the speaker system. None of them except the Zarquonian and the Daxomite had been speaking, and Koriand'r guessed that this was a mere petty exercise of authority over her and her fellow captives. She did not approve. The situation was clear to all of them. Trying to drive the point home with bellows and shouts only showed an inner weakness and lack of courage.

8,233 volts ripped through Koriand'r's exoskeleton. Her hair throbbed and her fingernails pulsed with agony. She also did not approve of this. Violence and pain had their uses, but this was sheer self-indulgence, or maybe an attempt by a weak mind to exert a sense of control over a hopelessly chaotic universe. For her part, she fell to her knees but didn't fall flat on the cell floor, and also managed not to piss herself.

"There's a new prisoner coming in, so by Zog, keep to the back of your cells and resign yourself to your fate. Resistance is useless!" the guard bellowed.

Koriand'r watched as they opened up the triple-locked doors. Four muscly Gordanians dragged in a transparent-aluminum cube, occupied by a pale-blue creature with white crystals sprouting at its orifices. It balanced awkwardly on three limbs, while three more limbs reached out at its equator and another three digitless, feathery ones probed the air. Saltwater sloshed in the bottom of its container.

"This is a special guest, so be sure to give zem the heartiest possible Cell Block 11 welcome." The guard on the intercom was now trying to take up a sarcastic, unctuous tone. This was just pathetic. "We have retrofitted a personalized cell suitable for amphibious life-forms. Behave well, and you may have your own containment units adjusted to better fit your personal requirements." A few methane-breathers wheezed hopefully, although the Zarquonian still steadfastly ignored it. The Daxomite rolled his eyes without breaking the whispered chant.

The blue alien did not struggle or protest as it was unceremoniously dumped into the pale green cell. There was a shallow depression full of brackish fluid that was almost, but not quite, enough for the creature to immerse itself in. The water-dispenser was bubbling, suggesting that the creature needed a lot of dissolved oxygen or methane in its liquid intake.

Once the guards had locked zem in, given the captive a few electric shocks, unlocked zem, dragged zem out, beat it up with Nth-metal rods, spat on it, cut it, deficated on the cuts, sterilized them, stiched the cuts up, then re-opened them with another beating before re-sterilizing them, and ordered the captive to shuffle back into zeir cell, it was time for a routine checkup on the other prisoners.

There was no need to open the cages for feeding or waste disposal, of course. Automated tubes delivered the former, and removed the latter when it piled up to unhygienic levels of excess. Koriand'r had been as tidy as she could manage, given the circumstances, and had not stooped to combing her waste for undigested portions of grain, like the Martian and the Zarquonian did.

"-neutron stars and waited outside the event horizon, so shall I endure. As he explored the dark spaces between solar systems and electrons, so shall I probe into the deeper meanings of his truth. As he awakened—"

Koriand'r had been raised to respect piety, to look kindly upon faith in a higher power than oneself, but what good was piety when that faith went unrewarded? Nevermind the philosopher Echiand'r's rantings against the concept of Moral Dessert, sometimes a person in extreme suffering needed to know that something, anything they did, was worth something more than a smug sense of personal worth.

Anyway, what good were messianic faiths? What was the point of waiting for a distant savior? How did that do anything to address the massive suffering in the here and now, the grumbling of her six remaining active stomachs and the hot, ugly, pain of her corrupted armpit glands?

The hideous tickle alerted Koriand'r that a gnat had alighted on her swollen gland. She relaxed a little. Patience was a virtue, even if it wasn't one of the cardinal Tamaranian virtues, or even as important as Bisonomy.

The guards dragged out the white Martian. They switched off the stabilization field just long enough for her to phase partway through the floor, then switched it back on, and cackled. Their echoing throats were well-adapted to cackling. Maybe Shub-Nigguroth had a fondness for ugly, wicked, sadistic laughter. She certainly didn't do much to arrest the atrocities that happened every moment in this big, beautiful, horrible, ugly universe of hers.

The white Martian begged the guards to free her. They pulled out polarity knives, grinned with their scaly faces, dripping down the predigestive fluid that could fray the complex compounds of a Tamaranian carapace, and cut her off at the knees. The scream was loud, but they followed up by quickly, if inelegantly, cauterizing the wounds with a proton skewer.

The Zarquonian kept praying as they dragged him out. They pulled out his ovipositor, made a lot of suggestive jokes, but thankfully didn't do anything worse than press a flame against its base. Gordanians had a code, even if it was tailored to their own convenience and broadly accommodating of a great many senseless cruelties, and they wouldn't...well, they wouldn't do anything "ungentlemanly" to their prisoners. Torture was one thing, but there are some lines that should not be crossed. For that, Koriand'r was thankful.

She considered saying a prayer of thanks to Shub-Nigguroth, but why? Wasn't the power of fornication one of the "blessings" that Shub-nigguroth had rained upon all life-forms with her unending river of love, good and bad? Wasn't the fact that she did nothing to stop this gift from being twisted and defiled proof of either divine weakness or divine apathy?

It wasn't all bad, Koriand'r reminded herself, trying to shore up her soul against gross blasphemy. Shub-Nigguroth's diversity of life had presented such things as the gnats that milked the puss from her infected glands. She lashed out her tongue, catching all but one, and savored the savory crunch as she passed them into her first stomach. That was good, wasn't it?

Her other eight stomachs roared, anticipating a meal that would not come for a long, long time.

For the first time, it all became too much. Koriand'r, princess of Tamaran, fell to her knees, and then crumpled to all fours, and then spread out on the cold floor. What was the point? Royal dignity would not stop her from suffering in abject misery. It would not fill any of her complaining stomachs. It would not elevate her above the station of a captive slave.

The Gordanians finished pounding the holy gremplork out of the pious Zarquonian, who was still praying through the bubbles of clotted green blood in his air-bladder. They choke-slammed him back into his cell, shouted "Praise Zog! Zog above all!" They slapped one another on the back, stepped out, and closed the cell door before locking it. He never even tried to escape. Evidently, faith in a higher power was all he needed.

The Daxomite continued muttering, and as they approached his cell, his words rose in volume. As they opened the door, he made a complicated sign with his left shackled hand, bit his finger, and spat out the blood on one of the guards.

At first, they took no notice. Fire gleamed in the Daxomite's eyes, but Koriand'r knew Daxomites were able to generate heat-vision. Still, the proximity of lead should have neutralized these powers, and the so-called "heat vision" was more of a directed laser.

The fire in his eyes spread to his mouth, and to the bit of blood and spittle on the guard's neck. The Gordanian slapped the spot, then slapped it again, then called out for help.

A hot-pink flame blazed out, three hand-lengths from the spot on the neck. The other guards tried to help, then quickly backed away as their efforts to extinguish the flame were in vain.

The guard coughed twice.

The guard wretched once.

Then he exploded.

Shards of bone and tangles of gut drove into the eyes and torsos of the other guards. As they bent over, doubled in pain, the Daxomite prisoner waved his right hand and spat again.

The other guards burst into flames, but the fire didn't penetrate their skin. It seared and blistered without touching the flesh underneath. They passed out, or died, from the sheer agony, gurgling and begging for mercy as their lips popped like overcooked red bugs.

"Praise Slath," the Daxomite said.

He broke off one of their hands and pressed it against the cell wall that restrained the Zarquonian. "Will you join me, brother, in prayer?"

"The prophet Zarquon will come," the alien said.

"I mean, will you join me in celebration of My God? The lord Slath, who breaketh our chains and giveth us strength."

"I await his coming with patience and grace. The galaxies shine in his crown." The Zarquonian said, with emphasis.

The Daxomite sighed. "Fine then. Be that way. I will find worthier worshippers."

The Daxomite took the severed hand to open the cage of the blue newcomer. It rubbed its feathered appendages across his feet, and he shook his head. "This is all by the will of Slath," he said, humbly, but he gave a little wink at the end.

The blue thing shambled towards the triple-locked door. The Daxomite snapped his fingers and whistled. The door opened. So did all the cell doors.

Koriand'r stumbled forward. "What...what was that? Daxomites don't have powers in the presence of strong lead."

The Daxomite smiled. "My power is not my own."

Koriand'r thought about tales of prophets and heroes. She bent her knees. "Where does it come from?"

He smiled. "Little one, I can share it with you, if you wish. It is not of Zarquon or Shub-Nigguroth or Phobos or Zog."

She lowered her head. "Teach me." She'd always wanted to believe in somebody helpful, somebody who cared, somebody who didn't plant their celestial ass in the heart of the sun, far away from the concerns of suffering mortals.

Flame danced around his face, without burning his skin or hair. "Slath welcomes you, little girl. You have much to offer Him."

"If..." she hesitated, afraid of retribution for her blasphemy.

The Daxomite beckoned with his leg, as if reading her mind.

"If you could do this all alone, why didn't you? Why did you wait?"

The Daxomite melted the chains in his hands and shaped the molten lead into a cleaver. He paired open the chest of the Gordanian and pulled out the air bladder with greasy fingers.

"Meat doesn't taste very good without salt."


	2. Chapter 1, pt1-3

"Lord Slath, may the fire of your life warm our blood and sustain is in the cold, uncaring universe. Lord Slath, may your supple darkness conceal us from the judgmental gaze of other gods. Lord Slath, may your secret power bind the faithful closer than any mitochondrial DNA."

Starfire breathed in deep, smelling the Sulphur and tannis root incense, the spoiled oil anointing her brow, and the oh-so-subtle whiff of old, dry bones. This wonderous planet had no horned carnivores, but she'd been able to lash-up a basic altar with a coyote skull and small deer antler.

Starfire massaged her chitin joints nervously. The ways of this planet were strange to her, but it seemed like more and more, things were just...dying. Flowers wilted, leaves fell leaving trees bare, even the grass around the tower was twisted and dead. Her friends didn't seem alarmed by it, but maybe they didn't notice. Everything mortal died, sure, but there was usually new life to replace it.

For the first time since she crash-landed in the harbor, she wondered if this blue mudball was one of the worlds slated for destruction by her Lord. She'd heard rumors that a Progeny of Slath lived somewhere in this solar system, but it couldn't be in a place like this, could it? Maybe the venerable-if-decadent civilization of Mars had produced the Progeny.

Her morning prayer finished, Starfire closed and locked the doors of the stone cabinet. She drew shut the very noisy bead curtain, stepped out, and closed the closet door, sealing it with a thin, barely-visible thread so she would know if anyone tampered with it. Starfire didn't really need these precautions, of course. Cyborg's security measures could deal with most villains that would break into the tower. Her habit of eating earth insects in her room and hallways ensured that Beast Boy did not listen in as a "fly on the wall". She kept Cyborg and Robin from ever opening it by telling them that it contained tampons. She kept Raven out by extracting a promise from her and trusting that a friend so careful about guarding her own secrets would respect the privacy of others.

Turning around, she pulled open the curtains to welcome another glorious day in jump city. When she saw outside the window, she screamed.

The nimble feet of Robin were the first to approach her door. Raven must be either in her sensory deprivation tank or deep in a meditative trance.

"Starfire? Starfire, what's wrong? Are you safe?" Robin shouted, barely audible above his hammering on her door. Cyborg came pounding up the hallway after him. It was still before 10AM, so Beast Boy would be deep in a death-like slumber.

Starfire fumbled with the door panel. The deathly cold had reached her fingers even through the window. Earthlings thought that space was cold, but they were wrong. There was no matter to conduct the heat energy in the vacuum. Starfire had known cold when she toured the Research and Defense Outposts of Tamaran's poles, but this cold...this was different. It smelled like the taste of tin. It felt like entropy.

"Starfire!"

She slammed the panel with trembling fingers, accidentally digging a furrow into the steal wall. Robin lunged past her, scanning the room for threats. Cyborg put a hand on her shoulder.

"Star, what on earth is wrong?"

"Earth is wrong!" Starfire squealed. "I do not know if it is a solar occlusion or a comet strike or terraforming invaders, or...or something more powerful than all of those, but this planet is dying!" She hovered around Cyborg and Robin like a "moth" circling a light bulb. "We must gather the canned goods, set up some kind of passive solar-heating glass-walled garden, and delve tunnels deep into the soil!" On the ship, there had been victims from dead worlds, like Daxom, Aristar, moon 327-77 of planet 771-72 orbiting binary star system 3323-23 by 32334-57. Gamma storms, killer meteorites, necromantic cascades, planets were a dangerous place to live. The uncaring universe was full of things that could wipe them clean, like a tongue lashing across a gnat-infested armpit.

"What do you mean?" He took her hand in his, endothermic mammal heat pulsing into her and a bit of sweat rubbing on her dry skin. "What did you see? What's happened?"

Starfire stared, reeling at the implications. She pointed at the window. "That! The planet is covered in icy death!"

Robin looked out the window. "It's...snowing."

Cyborg shaded his eyes. "Looks pretty mild compared to a New York Winter. Star, it's just snow."

Starfire looked at the dead world outside, the sky endoskeleton-white, the island and city coated with ice, only the artificial lights of soon-to-fail human habitations warming up the frigid world.

Cyborg squinted. Robin stepped up to the window and peered out through the webs of frost.

"What's wrong? What are you looking at?" Robin asked.

Cyborg scratched his head.

"The ambient temperature has fallen below freezing! The sky is darkened! Your planet has clearly reached an apocalyptic ecological disaster!"

Robin frowned and tilted his head. Cyborg broke into laughter. Was this the "gallows humor" she had heard so much about?

"It's just winter, Star. This thing happens every year," Cyborg said. "Sorry for laughing, but it's no big deal."

"Every year?" Starfire asked. She wasn't ready to let go of the fear and shock just yet, but she felt a little less cold.

"Winter," Robin said. "Children make snow-men and snow-angels. Christmas and hot chocolate." He stammered. "This part of the world gets colder for a little while, and the plants die off, and the animals store up fat and go to sleep, and then later the ice thaws and the animals wake up and the birds lay eggs and the plants come alive again."

"Come alive again?" Starfire asked. Surely only the power of Slath could raise the dead!

"Well, it looks like they're coming back to life," Cyborg explained. "Really, the trees shed their leaves before winter so they can save on energy, and some plants shrivel up above the surface but their bulbs and roots are still alive, and then when it's warmer and there's liquid water to feed them they kinda 'wake up' again. Meanwhile, just as it's getting cold in here, on the other side of the planet things are heating up and it's summer."

Starfire opened her mouth. Starfire closed her mouth. Starfire popped her joints while she scraped detritus from the inside of her mouth.

"This is normal?" She paused and thought. "The planet has a tilted axis?"

"Yes, exactly!" Cyborg said, while Robin said "Your planet doesn't?"

Starfire let out a long breath and cleared her spiracles while the flood of relief washed over her. "Oh thank-thank goodness," she said. "You are sure this is nothing to worry about?"

Cyborg and Robin nodded. Starfire hugged them both, and she could smell oxygen-rich blood rising to Robin's cheeks.

Her main arteries pumped smoothly again. She enjoyed nine seconds of peace before their communicators buzzed.

Starfire swept through the sky, ignoring the tiny ice crystals that pelted against her, while her friends followed behind her, to do battle against another villain who threatened the safety of her adopted city.

Friends. There was her Gnorfka, of course, but she suspected that some of her cell-mates on the prison ship had been friends. Not Varblok, obviously, or all the people who had complained about being locked up in the same wing as a vacuum-spewing Troq, but the funny White Martian and Azree'el the Daxomite definitely qualified.

"Converge on my location," Robin's voice crackled over the speaker. "Reports suggest an advanced crypto-meteorologist or dangerous elemental magic user, so approach with caution." "Roger," Starfire spoke back. Robin was sweet, but full of feminine aggression and hard reason. She hoped he wasn't one of the humans that would perish in Lord Slath's rise. Even if he did, maybe she could pray to Slath for his reanimation. She smiled. The coded text said that the worthy would be resurrected to serve Slath's hidden name in eternal glory. Surely her close friend Robin qualified for that. Cyborg and Raven did, and probably Beast Boy did too. He wasn't the strongest amongst them, but there was an...unspoiled energy to his being, like the almost-ripe glorka-berries on the edge of a branch.

When she arrived, nothing looked particularly disharmonious. True, snow blew and the pond had frozen over, but the children looked joyous and untroubled despite the cold. They were sensibly insulated against the cold by fuzzy, layered clothing. Some of them were building strange idols from the latticed ice crystals, with stick arms and carrot noses. Some sipped a chocolate-smelling liquid that steamed with heat and floated with white puffs of rendered ungulate bone. Others were sliding across the ice on bladed footwear in a manner that would have alarmed any parents present.

"I don't see the problem," Beast Boy said, echoing her thoughts. "Everyone looks happy."

"What did the report say?" Cyborg asked Robin.

"Just an emergency signal. It ended before there was any voice," Robin said, uneasily. "Maybe they were cut off before they could say anything." His tone suggested that this being an accident or a mistake was more than a remote possibility.

"I sense something unnatural," Raven whispered. Her voice carried on the howling wind.

Children continued, laughing and playing, maybe with a manic edge, but still, just children being children, unrestrained and un-supervised. Some could not be more than four OSASR old.

"They're children," Starfire said, almost to herself. Something tingled along her decentralized nervous system, clenching the nodes in her knees, shoulders, and third stomach. "Very small children."

"Yeah?" Beast Boy asked, as if ready to start a fight. "So?"

"So where are all the adults?" Starfire said.


	3. Chapter 1, pt 4-5

Robin approached one of the older children, patting down an ice-homunculi. This one had two balls on top of two other balls, maybe meant to be heads, with open mouths, lined by cones of ice, and branches sticking out from the top like horns or antennae.

"What's going on here?"

The child looked up at him. "It's a snow day. We're playing in the snow."

Cyborg processed some information on his arm-panel. "There wasn't supposed to be any precipitation today, or temperatures below the forties."

"I knew this could not have been normal!" Starfire said, pounding her left fist against her palm. "This is surely an extinction event, yes?"

"Weathermen get things wrong all the time," Robin said. "But this is a little strange. Kid, what's your name?"

"Calvin," the child said, not looking away from his sculpture of snow. "Anyway, who you calling kid, kid?"

Robin frowned and gritted his teeth.

"Have you seen anything unusual around here?" Robin asked in a level voice.

The kid shrugged and brushed some snow from the red poofball on his blue hat. "Everything's been pretty quiet since the prince showed up. There's hot chocolate over by the stand if you want some."

Robin hesitated. "Prince?"

The kid nodded. "The Winter Prince. We were all hoping and praying for a snow day, so he gave us one."

A sharp wind kicked up, blinding them with a flurry of dry ice crystals.

The child continued to pack snow onto his object, then finished off the "heads" with a carrot in each. The orange root vegetables stood out in vivid contrast to the white-grey landscape around them.

"Well, thank you." Robin said. "Where is this Winter Prince?"

Calvin pointed at the frozen pond.

"He's out skating on the pond?" Beast Boy asked.

Calvin shook his head and pointed down.

Robin shrugged, and they followed him out onto the ice.

Somebody laughed right behind Starfire's ear. She spun around, starbolts at the ready.

Nobody was near her. Children pushed along the ice in the distance, making grotesque shapes out of the packed snow, or sipping their hot chocolate.

"Wait a moment, please, friends," Starfire said. Raven and Robin stared at her. She flew over to the shack with "FREE HOT CHOCOLATE" in flashing lights above it.

"I would like some heated chocolate, please, sir," Starfire said.

For the first time, she saw an adult in this "winter" landscape. He was similarly insulated by thick, puffy clothing. His brown face was stretched by a warm grin, and his golden eyes were tender.

"Hey hon, what can I get you. Regular hot chocolate? Whipped cream or none? White hot chocolate? Peppermint flavor? Marshmallows or no? Cinnamon stick? I've even got salted caramel hot chocolate!"

"I would like a standard hot chocolate, with marshmallows and whipping cream," Starfire said, cautiously.

"Sure thing!" the man said. His fingers flew over the spigots and valves. Starfire noted that, despite the LED sign saying "Free" above him, he had a cash register. His hands reached towards it and twitched away. He handed Starfire a steaming mug that smelled like safety and home.

Starfire sniffed it. It had no whiff of psychogenic chemicals. She carefully licked at the spire of cream and rapidly-melting marshmallows. She sucked a sip of the contents into her mouth, testing with her layers of taste buds for anything strange.

She swallowed. Nothing happened. Her perspective didn't shift.

"Are you a government employee or perhaps a member of a religious organization?" Starfire asked.

"What are you talking about?" the man asked. He laughed. "I'm agnostic."

"I do not know of the gnostics, but how do you sustain your enterprises if you do not charge currency for food in this capitalist society?" Starfire inquired gently. The hot chocolate was really quite good. It reminded her of the blood stew cooked up by her Gnorfka.

The man laughed louder, slapping his thighs. Starfire had heard this mentioned in many narratives as an expression of humor, but she'd never seen it in person. It looked strange and uncomfortable. "What do you mean? I'm just doing this out of the goodness of my heart! It's almost Christmas after all!"

Starfire looked back to her friends, shuffling on the ice. A lot of the children skirting the ice had stopped around them, and some had brought over large lumps of snow to make vaguely humanoid figures out of it. "May I have four more whipped-cream-and-mallows-of-the-marsh hot chocolate cups, for my friends?" This man was trying to avoid talking about something. She could smell it in the air. A slight glance revealed two empty bottles of vodka on the floor of his shack.

"Of course!" he said, the relief in his voice audible. "Anything for, anything for the kids. Happy to help!"

Starfire took the mugs and strode towards her friends. She didn't trust the air currents and worried that flying might spill the contents. She knew the man at the booth was hiding something from her, but it would help to get Raven or Robin to question him with their superior interrogative skills.

Even though it was frozen over, the pond looked like it was flexing or shuddering. It was as if the stabilized water had an echo of prior motion. Starfire increased her speed.

Robin was arguing with one of the small, young humans. He reached towards them and pulled back his hand. The larva ran off, crying. Robin waved his arms helplessly while Cyborg ran after him.

Hot chocolate sloshed on Starfire's bare pseudodermis, even though she was walking carefully. She looked down. A faint line of fractures ran through the frozen water, like the webs woven by an eight-legged predatory arthropod or a damaged airlock.

Starfire increased her speed. The hot chocolate sizzled as it splashed on the ice.

She dropped the cups when a hand reached out of the ice. It closed over Robin's utility belt and yanked it off. He tumbled backwards into the water.

Starfire's abdominal arteries skipped a few beats. Even as she shot towards the dark hole in the ice, Robin's head broke the water and his gloved hand seized a large chunk of ice. He spread out his arms and legs, kicking with the same force that could decapitate a Slade-bot despite the weakness of flimsy, un-augmented human muscles. He paddled with one hand and kept his weight on the other to keep afloat.

Something slammed into him from below. He bit his lip. The ice was still breaking up around him, and the dark green shape shoved him towards the shore.

With the help of a push from below, Robin scrambled out of the water and slide along to a thicker patch of ice. His whole body shuddered and trembled like one of Raven's battery-powered massage tools. His breath was still coming clear, though, in steamy endothermic puffs.

The shape in the water rose up, and Starfire slowed down a little. It was green. The seal clapped its fins together and barked happily.

Starfire wrapped up Robin in a tight hug, conjuring up pulses of un-discharged starbolts to heat his cold wet body.

He made a strange noise, but she couldn't make it out through the rattling noise of his bony teeth slamming against each other.

When he spoke clearly, Starfire dropped him and spun around.

"Cyborg!"

Their metal friend wasn't crying for help or flailing around. His head was barely above the surface, mouth slack, eyes glazed.

A ripple crossed the water and he vanished.

Human bodies were well-insulated and buoyant, but Cyborg was mostly heat-conducting, high-density metal. Robin was strong, but he was still just a human. He couldn't lift 385 pounds of dead weight while swimming. His body was pouring all its energy into restoring the lost heat with friction.

"Beast Boy, turn into something that glows!" Starfire shouted. The seal became a ribbon-shaped water monster with transparent greenish flesh and a pulsing luminous carbuncle. Starfire punched straight through the ice below her, heedless of the damage to surroundings, while Beast Boy writhed ahead of her.

She saw no trace of the pale figure that had reached up through the ice, but the circle of light was small. Maybe it wasn't the only one. Maybe the pond was filled with...whatever they were, like newborns crawling through the rotting corpse of a giant traarg.

The faintest glint of green reflected back to them. Beast Boy plunged straight down. In this restricted environment, Starfire actually had to struggle to keep up with him.

The bubbles also helped. Cyborgs pupil was wide, and it didn't shrink even when Beast Boy's bioluminescent fish-form was right in front of it.

Humans didn't just need oxygen to heal, or to reproduce, they needed a constant stream of it, every minute, second-to-second, just to maintain their brain function. Oxygenated gas was more essential than fresh water, sunlight, or food. Did Cyborg have some back-up system to deliver oxygen to his brain or storage pumps linked to his remaining lung? How much air was in him when he went under? How much time did it take before that unreliable centralized nervous system would run down?

No time to worry about that now. She clasped his cold, cold hands, kicked towards the surface, and hoped for the best. Beast Boy shifted into something more buoyant, casting them into utter darkness as they vaulted towards air.

Starfire plunged out of the surface and returned to the blessed sky. Taking no chances with the jagged surface of frozen water, she swooped down to the edge of the shore, blowing the snow from a park bench before settling him onto it. She snapped off dead tree branches, ripped the top off a public trash receptacle, melted the ice from them, dried them out with a low-intensity starbolt pulse, and then ignited them with her laser-vision. She set the improvised firepit under the bench.

Beast Boy had flopped out of the water and darted over in cheetah form before resuming his human shape. He parted Cyborg's lips, checked his mouth, and pressed his mouth against Cyborg's, cheeks bulging. Was this like the thing that mother birds did to their offspring? She knew humans couldn't share languages like she could.

Beast Boy pumped ineffectually at the metal chest with his pipe-cleaner arms, then shifted into a gorilla. He pumped it like he was squeezing the juices out of a fruit, and then again did the strange kiss-like motion. Starfire felt strangely powerless.

She was just starting to mumble the words to a basic prayer when Cyborg vomited icy water onto Beast Boy's face. He rolled over, coughing and spitting, but he was clearly alive and breathing.

Some children had come over with blankets and dry winter clothes. Robin was sprinting over, even though he was shuddering so hard he could barely walk straight.

"Oh no, I am so, so sorry!" said a voice that sounded sincere. "Really didn't mean to do that. Sorry. Unintended consequences. My bad."


	4. Chapter 1 pt 6

They all turned around. In amongst the forest of snow-figures stood a pale, petite, dapper young man. He wore a tailored white suit with metallic-blue buttons and a sparkling silver tie. A thin, elegant silver crown set with pearls and white sapphires adorned his head. A fur-lined sea-green cloak hung from his shoulders. His polished silver shoes left damp prints on the ice. His skin was pale as this planet's giant moon, shot with dark blue veins, and while his fingernails were perfectly polished and manicured, the fingertips showed an ugly contrasting purple.

His mask contrasted the entire cultivated elegance with its primal crudity, just a crude face of cardboard, with an upturned gash for a smile and white circles of fabric for eyes, covered in tinfoil and glitter.

"Who are you?" Robin shouted.

The figure bowed and doffed his crown at them. Behind the white pantyhose back of the mask, Starfire could see a crude tie made of pale blue wool.

"Prince Winter, at your service," he said, in the same polite, cheerful voice as before. "I really should have taken more care with the skating pond ice." He waved an ivory wand inlaid with silver, and the pond froze over solid in seconds. "Mainly we've had visitors of five or eight, not beefy teenagers made of metal. Speaking of which, how is your shiny companion?"

"The shiny companion," Cyborg said, coughing heavily, "can speak for himself."

"I'll bet you're a man of simple tastes, right? Thick hot cocoa with lots of marshmallows and whipped cream." He pointed at Raven, "salted caramel flavor with a cinnamon stick," Robin "white hot chocolate, no marshmallows, syrup, or anything else," he pointed at Beast Boy "extra thick, rainbow marshmallows, and of course a candy cane stuck in, and whipped cream up six inches high," he turned to Starfire and frowned. "Hm. You're a bit of a puzzler, but I think hot chocolate infused with siracha-honey and a sprinkling of dead crickets is the thing that you'd appreciate the most. Be back in a jiffy."

Before they could say anything, he jumped and somersaulted his way over to the hot chocolate station and rapped his knuckles on the counter. At no point did he visibly run, jump, or otherwise move faster than a normal human could, but somehow he was there, several hundred feet away, in a matter of seconds.

"Friend Cyborg, are you alright? Your brain is receiving sufficient oxygen now?" Starfire asked, hugging him tight enough to leave dents on his metal frame.

"I'm f-fine star, really." He sneezed. "You should check up on Robin."

"But he was not submerged for a prolonged period of time!" Starfire gasped. "Humans need uninterrupted access to fresh air!" That message had been driven home when the play-combat pillow fight had gotten out of control and Beast Boy had lost consciousness for a few minutes.

"Star, relax." Cyborg repeated. "You pulled me out in time and there's no harm done."

Starfire clutched her arms and wiggled back and forth, unconsciously imitating the human shivering reflex. She'd always been afraid of cold, dead places. There was that Tamaranian folk-tale about the four-headed white saurian that belched frozen fire, and the terrifying time that a comet crashed into their planet's orbit, showering the eastern hemisphere with ice and darkness, or the streak of growing cold when that gas-based deep space entity blocked their sun to feed on its light. The flame of Slath was light, warmth, life, transformation and renewal. That meant that death was...cold, wind, and ice. The extinguishing power of water, the power to trap, paralyze, and suffocate threatened the cosmos.

Starfire shook her head. She gratefully accepted the warm mug as it was pressed into her hands, then jumped into the air. Prince Winter was back, and none of them had seen him approaching.

"So, what can I help you fine ladies and gentlemen with?" he said, unfolding a metal chair and propping himself daintily on it.

Beast Boy and Cyborg sipped their hot chocolate. Raven sniffed hers, muttered a few words, and then took a mouthful, with a surprised look. Robin held his at arm's reach. His face was tightened up in the normal suspicious frown. He was comfortable with known friends and allies. He had no hesitation in dealing with clear enemies. He clearly didn't know how to deal with this stranger offering him hot chocolate.

"We, uh, we got a distress call from here."

"Is that so?" the boy asked, giving away nothing behind that sparkling aluminum foil.

"Yes," Robin said.

"Pity," the prince replied.

Robin frowned deeper. "Are you responsible for what's going on here?" Raven took another sip of her hot chocolate, then closed her eyes and savored the smell. She surreptitiously made a small gesture behind her back.

The prince tilted his head. "I'm not sure I understand you."

"A human child said that they had prayed for a day of snow, and you delivered one."

The figure nodded. Something was bothering her about him, nudging in from the nerve-clusters in her hips and shoulders, but she couldn't quantify it.

"Any idea why that would cause somebody to call 911?" Robin said through clenched teeth. Cyborg finished his mug and set it down on the ground, shifting in his blankets. He stared at the sky nervously.

Prince Winter tilted back his chair and stretched his arms out. "Why do you think that could be?"

Robin chewed his lip and glanced at Starfire. "Do you know why there are no adults here?"

Prince winter rocked back and forth on his chair. "That's not strictly accurate. The guy running the hot chocolate stand is thirty-seven."

Robin clenched his fists. He was losing control of this dialogue.

"Why is that man giving away hot chocolate without accepting payment?" Starfire said.

"Is that so strange?" the prince asked, leaning forward.

"He's using very strong magic, but I can't detect any potions or mind control," Raven said.

Prince winter extended his arms in a "See? What did I tell you?" gesture.

"It is strange," Starfire said, stepping closer. She sipped the hot chocolate again. Robin still hadn't touched it. "Capitalists do not regularly distribute free food and drink, especially low-nutrition treats like hot chocolate, unless affiliated with organizations dedicated to bringing about social good or providing promotion on behalf of a business or religion, and such cases organizations are prominent and forward about their branding." She looked at Robin, who nodded encouragingly. Maybe she could do this "interrogation" that Robin and Raven excelled at.

"Humans rarely leave their offspring unattended, especially at these young ages and in an urban environment known for its frequent criminals." Starfire tried to give him a serious, dangerous expression. She knew that she personally could rip out a human's spine and stab them through the eye with it, but she wasn't very good at conveying that threat the way her friends were. Intimidation, despite appearances, was a very precise art, all about restraint and implication. She swallowed. There were many curious facts here, but she didn't know how to connect them.

"How interesting," Prince Winter said, examining the black polish on his exquisite fingernails.

Starfire stomped her foot. This wasn't how things were supposed to go. When they showed up, the villains would attack them, or run away, or smash things. They didn't give polite apologies and offer cups of warming drink. Nothing about the situation explicitly defined Prince Winter as the bad guy, except almost everything in this place was very wrong and they could all tell it. Children were skating, playing, and making men of snow. There were a great many snowmen around them, she thought, idly. The most disruptive thing that had happened here was them breaking the ice.

She frowned. "Were you the one who broke through the ice and stole Robin's utility belt?" This was a clear crime, a single violation, an explicit act of violence she could focus on.

"Who, me?" the prince asked. He stood up from his chair. "I'm hurt. That was really accusatory of you."

"I need my utility belt to do my job," Robin said, stepping forward. Beast Boy twisted into a massive bear shape and growled. Cyborg rose to his feet, still shivering and clutching the blankets.

"What makes you think I have it?" the prince said, folding his arms.

"It's very cold out here," Robin said. "Whoever grabbed my utility belt was somebody who didn't need to breathe in the conventional sense."

"What does that have to do with anything?" the prince snapped.

"You're the only one whose breath isn't fogging the air. Hand my belt over, let the hot chocolate vendor go, and return these children to their parents." Robin's voice, from that tender little human throat, was so deep and strong. Starfire was honestly surprised when the prince didn't step back.

"I notice you haven't returned to your parents," the prince said, sulkily. "Oh, I forgot, that's because you don't have any!"

Robin tightened his fists, but he didn't show anything on his face. "What did you do with them?"

"It's pretty rich, a bunch of teenage vigilantes talking to me about parental supervision," the prince said, folding his chair and picking it up. "Abusive dead parents, dead parents and an emotionally distant surrogate father figure, mom and pop's little science experiment, raised by Gnorfka and never knew the love of another royal Tamaranian, and then," the prince, who had addressed Beast Boy, Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire in turn, pointed his ivory wand at Raven. "I mean, talk about daddy issues-"

Prince Winter shot into the air, the chair dropping from his hands, his face surrounded by a black glow. He didn't clutch at his throat or flail or panic. Starfire looked back. Raven's face was utterly devoid of emotion, but her right eye was twitching and her hands were shaking.

"Oh dear, it seems I've touched a nerve," Prince Winter said. "Sorry, that was honestly rather unbecoming of me. Lots of low blows. But I'm just so...so upset, that you're willing to start a fight over next to nothing. You know?"

Raven dropped him to the ground.

Robin reached for his bo staff, then remembered. "If you're in the mood to make nice, I'd really appreciate getting my utility belt back."

"How do I know you won't just use it to attack me?" Prince Winter asked. "You've certainly behaved very uncivilly so far."

"You don't, but it would be a gesture of good faith," Robin said. "And if you're going to keep my stolen property, then we'll definitely attack you."

Prince Winter stamped both his feet. "You can't leave well enough alone, can you?" He waves his arms around. "There's snowball fights and hot chocolate and the laughter of little children, and that's not good enough for you. All I wanted to do was make the kids happy! I did my best for them, and you want to ruin this? Can't you ever think of anybody other than yourself?"

"Cut the baloney," Cyborg said. "We know something's up and you're not going to hide it anymore."

"Fine, you want a fight? Talk shit, get hit. You're already surrounded."

Starfire looked around. She didn't see any robots, or demons, or henchmen in silly but thematically-consistent costumes. She did notice that all the human offspring were fleeing from their area.

There were a great many men of snow around them.


	5. Chapter 1 final part

"Does anyone else think these snowmen look kinda weird? All the fangs, extra limbs, extra heads? Also there's way more of them than there were, like, five minutes ago?"

"Already ahead of you," Cyborg said, turning his arm into the sonic cannon.

Starfire covered her mouth and murmured the third canticle of Slath.

The snow sculptures did not move. That is to say, she didn't see them moving. As she turned around, there seemed to be more of them every time. She did not see them move. That one with three heads was six feet closer than it was before. She didn't hear them move. She didn't feel them disturb the air. She just received a vague sense of movement, and when she turned to look, there were more snow men, closer to her, and then she turned back to the place she was looking before, and the stick arms were in a different position, the body was closer, the head had tilted, the mouth was wider or narrower.

Beast Boy roared at them and waved his paws. Raven conjured up swaths of dark energy. Cyborg charged his blaster. The snow men drew closer, unseen, unheard, but relentless and sly.

Robin made the first move. He only reached for his absent utility belt for half a second. The closet snow man to him was a squat, uneven thing, three short stick-arms sprouting from its left side and one long, twigless branch dragging on the ground, two stubby little carrots mounted on its three-jawed mouth. He swung a roundhouse kick right at its center of mass.

Its chest burst into a spray of white. Its head bounced on the ground twice before breaking in two. The result was anticlimactic and encouraging.

Starfire immediately distrusted the ease of this success.

Silently, every single one of the grotesque snow sculptures turned their lumpy heads to point their compressed carbon eyes right at Robin.

Together, the teen titans had fought dozens of Slade-bots at once. They had faced off against an army of Billy Numerous. Here and now, she couldn't quite remember if she'd ever seen this many hostile "faces" at once.

The men of snow opened their jaws, some lined with icicles, some pairs of stick-mandibles, some simply carved out shallows in the snow.

They roared.

The sound was painful enough to make Starfire falter in her flight. The mass of snow-monsters converged on Robin like iron-filled putty on a magnet. Starfire plunged to rescue her friend, but Raven reached him first, lifting him into a tree with dark energy.

Cyborg took out a neat cone of them with one blast while Beast Boy smashed the ones that reached too close with his mighty paws. Raven tried to lift up several hundred with one go, but flinched dropped them after a few inches.

"They're infused with spell resistance," Raven hissed. "I can't directly affect them without a serious fight."

"Worry not, friends!" Starfire shouted with a certainty she almost felt. "We have the advantage of height!" She rained down starbolts like the fist of trigon, turning the fiends into puddles.

It should not be possible for a bottom-heavy monster with arms that were literally stick-thin to climb a tree. They didn't exactly climb, to be precise. They slid up the trunk on their rounded bottoms, like the toy football players on Beast Boy's magnetic game. This time, Starfire dove through the branches to snatch Robin out of their reach.

Cyborg dispatched another swath with his sonic blast, but there were hundred and hundreds more where those came from. Beast Boy was barely keeping the others at bay. She didn't know exactly what those stick-arms and ice-fangs could do to cyborg's titanium-alloy body, but she had a strong feeling that it would be better not to find out. She pitched in with the duo of "buddies", strafing through lines of snow fiends with starbolts and taking out large clusters with her eye-beams.

Raven was adapting to the spell resistance, wielding telekinetic clubs of garbage cans, park benches, and street lights.

"Let me down! I need to fight!" Robin said as he struggled in her arms.

"Ranged attacks or area effects are necessary to combat this enemy," Starfire said, using on arm to keep him pinned against her side. "You are unarmed."

Robin squirmed and wriggled but her grip was titanium-strong. She glanced at the human children, no longer throwing snowballs or skating. Some of them were cowering, covering their ears or faces. Most of them, though, were sculpting the snow. They were building even more snow monsters with the frenzy of slaves on an assembly line. As they stuck on the carrot or the last stick, the lumpy bodies groaned and scuttled into the fray.

As she hovered, dozens of snow men turned to face her. They opened their mouths wide, and an icy wind full of snow crystals blazed up after her.

Starfire yelped and soared straight up, Robin biting back a scream as the flew. Were they somehow learning, adapting, or mutating? Was this just an ability they had held back until now? Was the Winter Prince toying with them, holding back greater reserves of occult power because he didn't consider them a serious threat?

Whatever the reason, her shoulders and knees had begun to resolve their nebulous plan. She angled her flight and dove down in front of the hot chocolate stand, tossing Robin a gentle six feet above the ground. "Please, friend, coordinate with the seller of hot chocolate! I have faith that you can formulate a back-up strategy!" she shouted over her shoulder. "Worry not, I have a plan!"

By the time Starfire returned to her friends, the situation had deteriorated. Cyborg's battery was running low. Beast Boy had turned into a giant squid so he had the improved reach and range of multiple limbs to keep the enemies at bay. Raven was focusing her magic entirely on shielding herself and her companions from blasts of frost breath.

Starfire dive-bombed a few larger clusters of snow monsters, flitting out of range as soon as they became aware of her proximity. Her real focus wasn't them.

She landed among the children.

"Why are you building these snow men?" she asked, in a gentle, neutral voice.

"So we can have a snow day," said one girl while a small boy said "because he told us to" at the same time.

Cyborg screamed behind her, but she maintained eye contact with the larval humans.

"Where are your parents?"

They avoided her gaze.

"Did the Winter Prince do something to them?"

One orange-haired child in a green parka stumbled forward, crying "It's my fault! I just wished we could have a day off, and I wouldn't have somebody telling me to go inside! I didn't mean it! I didn't want any of this to happen!"

Other children chimed in. They'd made wishes. They'd hoped. They'd prayed. And then this had happened, so they felt that had no choice but to go forward with it. After all, he'd given them everything they thought they wanted, and there was no turning back after the terrible thing they'd done.

Starfire squeezed the children in turn, gently stroking their backs and licking their hair the way her gnorfka had when she was freshly emerged from her proto-cocoon.

"Young humans, this is not your fault, and I do not believe that you have brought this here, but you can help stop it." The larvae looked up at her, wide-eyed. "Will you promise to help me and my friends defeat this Winter Prince, so that your planet continues along its natural course, and eventually, the spring will come to revive the green world around you?" She didn't say "and we will bring your parents back", because she firmly believed not to make promises she couldn't keep. That was why, when she initiated into the cult of Slath, she didn't swear to sacrifice her first-born child on the throne of bones. She thought she had the conviction, but she'd never laid an egg, and didn't know how strong the bond with her offspring might be. Better to promise less and follow through than to break a vow. Azree'el had told her that not everyone had to follow the Deepest Path of Slath. The path of the fifth circle made smaller demands of her, and none of her friends had connected her absences with the "escapes" from Jump City's high-security prison.

Starfire desperately wanted to join her friends in righteous battle, but she took the time to grasp each child firmly by the hand in turn, as she explained her plan to them.

Starfire strafed the outer ring of snow men with eye beams to get their attention. They broke off and charged after her, spitting rays of frost. She looped, duck, and wove through the air like a six-winged keff't bird, taking time to throw a starbolt at one or two malformed snow sculptures, but doing little real damage.

Her distraction gave Beast Boy, Cyborg, and Raven space to regroup. She swooped past the hot chocolate stand and saw Robin in animated conversation with the terrified vendor. All was going according to plan.

Starfire turned and shot straight up. She continued flying as the pond shrunk beneath her, then the park, until she could see past the ring of buildings around her.

The Prince hadn't ranged as far as she thought he might have. He perched on a gargoyle just outside of the park bounds, sipping from a wine glass of sparkling cider and lifting opera glasses to the eyeholes in his rough mask.

As she drew closer, the questions bubbled up to the surface of her mind. It wasn't only humans that needed to breathe. Most planet-born or moon-born life required a steady stream of oxygen or methane to survive. That was, at least her sister believed, why so many of them despised "Troqs" like her, because they could fly through the interplanetary void. No matter how many generations they spent planetside, they were distrusted as perpetual foreigners, like the Mi-Go of Pluto or the Romani of Earth. The refrain she heard on asteroid cafes and space stations was "go back to the void", as if she didn't still need to eat and drink like any planet-bound child of Shub-Nigguroth.

None of the humanoid species she knew of demonstrated powers anything like this Prince of Winter, and he certainly smelled like a human.

So why didn't his breath cloud the nitrogen-rich air? How had he stayed under the water for such a long time? Maybe he had a spell to let him breathe water, but she didn't think so.

Blue veins and unconventional exothermic body temperature could be accounted for by a mutation or biological modification, but he wasn't just as cold as his surroundings. He was colder. She only had to watch the patterns of snowfall around him to see that he was a veritable heat sink.

"I appreciate the interest, but I'm not into girls," the Winter Prince said.

Starfire didn't think. She fired eyebeams right at that hideous aluminum mask.

The last thing she saw before blindness and pain was Prince Winter flicking his wand in her direction. She flew back up fast, praying to Slath that there weren't any news helicopters or low-flying airplanes overhead.

Cautiously, Starfire probed her face. The eyelids were torn and there was tender, burnt skin around them, but the actual consolidated orbs of evolved compound eyes had survived. For a few moments she was truly frightened that she would reach up and find sockets weeping trails of bubbling burnt jelly, like the stuff that Raven created when she tried to fry chicken eggs for breakfast. She breathed slowly and licked at her stinging eyeballs, waiting for her sight to return. First there was a grey blur, then grey blobs, then her sense of motion and color returned. Finally, she was ready.

She flew down to the hot chocolate stand and caught up with Robin on his plan while she shared hers. It was a good plan, a solid plan, and they would be able to execute it quickly. She also buzzed by Raven and whispered it into her ear, so that she could telepathically share it with the other titans.

If something went wrong, she'd have to leave her friends to fend for themselves. Her first priority needed to be the children.

Starfire started by clearing a break in the forces around Cyborg and Beast Boy. Cyborg would need her support and the enemy's attention if she intended to implement this stage successfully.

Starfire didn't know if these snow things had the power of hearing, but she was careful to whisper her plan to Cyborg while the sounds of battle covered her words.

"I'm not gonna like this, but yeah, I gotcha," Cyborg said through gritted teeth, over the alert sound of his battery.

The human children were forming a long line in front of the hot chocolate stand. Robin had put on an apron, oddly fetching on him, and helped the worker to distribute

They both concentrated on the north wing of the attackers, while side-stepping out onto the lake. Something like a sideways mouth, raised up impossibly on a dozen stick-limbs, closed over Cyborg's leg, and he screamed as the frost radiated upwards. His foot blaster took care of it, but his mobility took a serious dive then.

"Are you ready?" Starfire asked.

"As I'll ever be," Cyborg said, wincing.

Starfire wrapped him in a tight hug and lifted ever so slightly.

Cyborg pointed his canon downwards, and fired.

Firing with individual starbolts and eye beams along the edges of the lake would have given away her strategy to Prince Winter, if not to the swarming creatures that served him. Some of them crumbled in the warmer water, others bobbed and floated, but froze solid in the air.

"Thank you Bill Waterson!" Cyborg shouted.

A small army of them still remained. Starfire watched the children returned from the hot chocolate stand to their snow forts and benches. As she'd suspected, the snow monsters largely ignored their presence. She didn't know if magical constructs were programmed like computers or trained like animals, but whatever the means of controlling them, they appeared not to recognize the presence of tiny humans as a threat. After all, this whole scheme of the prince was ostensibly for their amusement.

Starfire could hear the slapping of polished fancy shoes on the frozen ground, rapidly approaching. Raven gave her the signal.

"Now!" Starfire shouted, her voice echoing across the open space.

The children flung their mugs of hot chocolate. Countless more snow men flailed with stick arms while they melted into steaming sludge. Carrot noses sunk into faces and through chests. Coal eyes dissolved into black muck. Heads rolled off or split in two as torsos grew too narrow to support them. The snow men did not scream, or roar, or give any sound of distress.

"Honestly, I turn my back for one second and this place falls to pieces!" the prince said, skipping and jumping over to the edge of the pond. He pulled out his wand and clicked his tongue. A silver bead of light concentrated at the tip, growing in size, as he waved it through the air.

The pond froze over. Some of the puddles of snowmen began to bubble and rise up, like cow-milk cheese in a microwave oven.

Beast Boy transformed from a flea on Winter Prince's hand into a Pteranodon, snatching the wand in one foot. As he flapped his wings, the other leg scraped the mask from the prince's face. Raven rose out of her dark energy portal with the Nth-metal restraints that she'd brought from the tower.

Some of the children gasped, and some screamed. Beast Boy squawked in alarm and increased his speed exponentially. Cyborg said a four-letter word.

The second most arresting feature on the prince's face was his lips. They were blue. Not the shiny dark blue of gothic lipstick, not the smeared blue of blue raspberry partially frozen beverages, but the unmistakably natural blue of a creature without thick fur or appropriate insulate exposed to sub-zero temperatures for far too long. The skin was split and little bits of muscle showed through the cracks.

The tongue flapping around in that mouth was purple as a human liver. The nose and ears were a purple so dark it was almost black, rough and torn. The skin was so white as to be nearly translucent, interrupted only by jagged purple veins and dried dark patches.

The most arresting feature was his eyes. She could see the bone that normally housed those fragile, non-compound eyes, and a pair of pale blue crystals, embedded in that centralized brain right where the optic nerve should be.

The starbolt in her hand dissipated. Starfire sank to the ground.

"You know, it's rude to stare," the walking impossibility said.

Only Slath could raise the dead. It was fundamental. This was a wild, crazy universe with lots of strange powers, magic, science, and unclassifiable things, but this was clearly not the work of Slath's firey magic.

"Jesus Christ man, what happened to you?" Cyborg asked, horror, incredulity, and sympathy mingled in his voice.

"Oh, you don't want to hear my boring old story," he said, waving his hand dismissively. "Absent parents, Christmas eve, nasty trouble with one of those cast-iron fences. It's all extremely sappy and banal."

"Are you some kind of, like, evil snow-zombie?" Beast Boy asked. "Where are your eyes?"

"Free-willed, capable of coherent speech and possessed of elemental magic? Yeah, sure, I'm a 'zombie'," the prince said, his busted lip curling in disgust. "You don't see me lurching around moaning about brains do you? And it's pretty rich, you lot calling me 'evil', considering the kind of unholy forces you pal around with."

Starfire's expression was already frozen, but Raven gasped. She fell to her knees and dropped the chains from limp hands.

Raven was supposed to use her magic to suppress his powers, long enough for them to tie him up. Sparks of dark energy flickered off her. Her jaw hung upon.

"I don't need that wand to use powers, anyway, it just focuses them," the Winter Prince snapped.

"Azerath...Azerath Metrion Zynthos!" Raven shouted, but nothing happened. Her lip was quivering and her eyes looked wet. "Azerath Metrion Zynthos! Zynthos!"

"Oh dear, I seem to have shattered somebody's composure," the prince chuckled.

He addressed his words to Raven, but Starfire could feel the glinting crystals in those bare sockets, boring into the very core of her being.

He couldn't possibly know. Nobody on Earth knew about the cult of Slath.

"You know, you really shouldn't-"

Robin interrupted the prince with a flying jump kick to the face. He pinned the revenant's arms behind him, preventing any spellcasting gestures, and secured the chains.

"You're under arrest," Robin said. "Raven, do you think this will hold him until we can figure out a secure specialized facility with the Jump City police? Raven?"

Robin turned to her.

Her lips were moving, but no breath came out. The shaking of her body clearly had nothing to do with the cold.

"I've fought guys like this before. Don't pay attention to anything he says. It's just supposed to throw you off your game."

Raven breathed out something that might have been "it worked". She flickered, forced herself upright, and finally managed to hover a few inches above the ground again, resuming her usual mask of composure.

"What do you think he was talking about? I mean, we're not evil or unholy."

"No idea," Starfire and Raven both said at once.

On the flight home, Starfire talked extensively, loudly, and with a not-entirely-convincing jollity about the festivals and customs of her homeworld. Raven, as usual, didn't talk at all.

Once again, the universe had reminded her that she wasn't the only person who kept secrets.

Starfire's voice was the loudest thing as the winds ripped around them and the snow continued to fall. It wasn't the sight of the risen earthling that had shaken her to the core. It was the implications. He didn't even claim a connection to any god, false or otherwise.

Starfire promised to make time to see the Winter Prince during visiting hours. She also intended to contact the Alpha Centauri cult chapter with some very serious theological questions.


End file.
